Dazed and Confused

I’m left dazed and confused by the responses of friends and family members who say, in spite of their reservations about Biden’s support for Israel’s unrelenting attack on Gaza, they will vote for him to stop Trump, insisting Trump will obliterate our democracy.

Let’s take a close look at the anemic democracy Biden supporters are defending. The rich have gotten richer under Biden while social inequalities have spiked: housing, food and health care are unaffordable to many. His new policy restricting migrants is virtually the same as Trump’s. Our infrastructure is crumbling as the Congressional budget prioritizes our tax dollars for record expenditures on bombs, fighter jets, drones, and the like. As Noam Chomsky has observed, “The US has a permanent war economy.”

Noam Chomsky, April, 2022.

After eight months of watching a livestreamed genocide I can’t conceive of voting for genocide enabler, Joe Biden.

I can’t comprehend how Biden supporters can so easily shake off his complicity in one of the worst genocides in modern history. Given Biden’s constant supply of weapons to Israel, the assault on Gaza is as much Biden’s war as Netanyahu’s.

Everywhere you look in Gaza there is extensive bomb damage.

I have been forever altered by seeing livestreamed images of death and destruction from Gaza. Pre-Gaza I could greet my neighbor’s adorable 2-year-old in a very present way.  After absorbing so many horrible murders and injuries of children in Gaza, their images are superimposed on my toddler neighbor.

Gaza now has the largest population of child amputees in the world.

Israel’s assault on Gaza is often referred to as “The War on Children,” referring to the over 14,000 children in Gaza that have been killed. Childhood deaths in Gaza are about to climb even higher as many more children are poised to die of starvation due to scare food sources.

A Palestinian father leaves Eid clothes on his daughter’s grave (8 year’s old)

I find it incomprehensible that Biden supporters can turn off these images.  How can they shrug their shoulders and offer rationales like, “What’s happening in Gaza is terrible, but that’s the price of war.”

A friend commented on the general public’s indifference, “If you ever wondered what people in Germany were doing when Hitler’s genocide was raging, now you know.”

My dazed and confused state produces alienation. While I have like-minded friends with whom I join in protests in support of Gaza, I also have long-time friends who are sensitive caring people, but who get on my case when I admit that I can’t shake the images of orphaned, traumatized children. They rebuke me with phrases like, “Can you please stop bringing up Gaza?”

In this forlorn landscape, my hope comes alive watching young people and college students surge onto the national and international stage, marching for Gaza and Palestinian rights.  I’m worried by the manner in which they are being singled out, unfairly persecuted for standing for Gaza. Some were withheld their diplomas for participating in college encampments in support of Gaza.

Student encampment at UC Berkeley

The government repression is building. Antisemitism is being weaponized against Gaza supporters. A bill before the Senate would criminalize student protesters who stand for Palestine. The repression is taking on scary dimensions. In May, Hesen Jabr, a Palestinian-American labor and delivery nurse in a Manhattan hospital, was fired, when in her acceptance speech for receiving a compassionate care award. she lamented the suffering of Palestinian mothers.

Hasen Jabr with her award, shortly before her comments which led to her being fired

Please open your hearts to Gaza. Don’t look away. Don’t become desensitized to images of families desperately searching for loved ones under the rubble of bombed-out buildings, of children having limbs amputated without anesthesia, of mothers wailing as they cling to the corpses of their martyred children. Hold them in your hearts.

Stand for humanity.  Stand for Gaza. Stand for a ceasefire.  Consider voting for a  peace candidate, like Jill Stein.  A vote for Biden is a vote for a war criminal and a stamp of approval for the US government to engage in future war crimes.

We are not powerless. We have the numbers to turn the tide. Be on the right side of history.